Spy Trade: How Israel's Lobby Undermines America's Economy

Israel and its American lobby have committed audacious but generally unknown crimes against the United States. The government has long kept files about Israeli espionage, weapons smuggling, and covert operations on American soil classified...until now. Spy Trade begins on the trail of a vast smuggler network funneling stolen and illegally purchased surplus WWII arms to Jewish fighters in Palestine. When the FBI threatened to crack down, a clandestine summit meeting yielded minor convictions for small-time operators, but not the financial masterminds behind the scheme. Spy Trade probes Israel lobby smuggling operations diverting uranium from the US to Israel's Dimona nuclear weapons facility. The Justice Department battled mightily to regulate two key enablers—the Jewish Agency and American Zionist Council—as Israeli foreign agents in the 1960s. But when the effort collapsed, it unleashed election law violations and escalating intimidation of American politicians by the Israel lobby. Spy Trade reveals the long-term impact of a newly declassified "third scandal" that began in the 1980s. In the midst of both the Iran-Contra affair and the Jonathan Pollard espionage incident, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Israeli embassy conducted a spectacular clandestine operation against American industries and workers; it has so far cost the US economy $71 billion and a hundred thousand jobs each year by shutting down or diverting US exports. More than a dissection of the tactics used by Israel and its lobby to evade justice, Spy Trade provides strategies for ending criminal immunity and restoring American governance.